In the spirit of Dr. Strangelove and The Atomic Café, a blackly sardonic people’s historical past of atomic error and near-misses revealing the hushed-up and forgotten episodes within which the good powers gambled with catastrophe

Rudolph Herzog, the acclaimed writer of Dead Funny, provides a devastating account of history’s such a lot irresponsible makes use of of nuclear expertise. From the rarely-discussed nightmare of “Broken Arrows” (40 nuclear guns misplaced throughout the chilly struggle) to “Operation Plowshare” (a idea to take advantage of nuclear bombs for giant engineering tasks, similar to a the development of a moment Panama Canal utilizing three hundred H-Bombs), Herzog focuses in on long-forgotten nuclear tasks that just about resulted in disaster.

In an remarkable people’s heritage, Herzog digs deep into documents, interviews nuclear scientists, and collects dozens of infrequent photographs. He explores the “accidental” drop of a Nagasaki-type bomb on a teach conductor’s domestic, the implanting of plutonium into sufferers’ hearts, and the discovery of untamed tactical nukes, together with guns designed to kill enemy astronauts.

Told in a riveting narrative voice, Herzog—the son of filmmaker Werner Herzog—also attracts on adolescence thoughts of the ultimate period of the chilly conflict in Germany, the rustic as soon as noticeable because the nuclear battleground for NATO and the Warsaw Pact international locations, and discusses proof that Nazi scientists knew find out how to make atomic weaponry . . . and selected now not to.

The Disappearance of the Social in American Social Psychology is a serious conceptual historical past of yank social psychology. during this demanding paintings, John Greenwood demarcates the unique belief of the social dimensions of cognition, emotion and behavior and of the self-discipline of social psychology itself, that was once embraced through early twentieth-century American social psychologists.

Offers a accomplished overview in elements of the exploration of the sunlight approach, targeting the know-how of the robot area probes that made it attainable, together with missions which - for various purposes – have been by no means completed.

This richly distinctive 1981 biography captures either the private lifestyles and the medical profession of Isaac Newton, featuring a completely rounded photo of Newton the fellow, the scientist, the thinker, the theologian, and the general public determine. Professor Westfall treats all points of Newton's profession, yet his account centres on a whole description of Newton's achievements in technology.

Biometric identity and registration platforms are being proposed via governments and companies internationally. unusually they're lower than so much quick, and systematic, improvement in international locations in Africa and Asia. during this groundbreaking publication, Keith Breckenridge strains how the origins of the structures being constructed in locations like India, Mexico, Nigeria and Ghana are available in a century-long background of biometric executive in South Africa, with the South African adventure of centralized fingerprint identity remarkable in its chronological intensity and demographic scope.

Additional info for A Short History of Nuclear Folly: Mad Scientists, Dithering Nazis, Lost Nukes, and Catastrophic Cover-ups